Creative Agency Secrets

Article published today in Business Startup website Startups.co.uk  on why Small Businesses are failing to capitalise on the opportunities offered by Blogs.

Research from online hosting provider Fasthosts has found that
nearly half of small business believe using a blog to encourage traffic
to their website would increase sales, yet a mere 3% of those polled
said they plan to launch one.

The study also found that over a quarter of small firm said
they need a blog to be updated daily to ensure that potential customers
return to their website.

“In today’s hyper-competitive market, blogs provide a fantastic
way for small businesses to differentiate themselves through
personalising their website and attracting more customers,” said Andrew
Michael, chief executive officer at Fasthosts.

“The corporate blogs of large companies are bound by corporate
guidelines and gatekeepers, so for small businesses there is far
greater opportunity for interesting comment and genuine dialogue with
customers.”

However, just over a third of respondents said that as long as
the blog was informative and interesting, it didn’t matter to them how
regularly it was updated.

So, some mis-conceptions there compared to reality.  Check out the business blog rules search I did Business Blog Rules and decide for yourself what works for your organisation.

Blogger Ergo Sum!

I love this - from Adriana Lukas (queen of the blogosphere and sometime client of mine). She maintains a couple of blogs one is  Media Influencer

She writes "Technology is dangerous! Ben Clemens is a Yahoo! employee and his mobile phone was stolen
on his commute. So far, so mundane. His phone had a camera and a photo
blogging software called ShoZu configured to post any picture taken by
the phone camera to his Flickr photostream. Nice. The fun starts when
the thief not knowing about it, takes pictures of his family, dog etc and they are automatically uploaded. Ben becomes a 15 minute celebrity."

This just cracked me up.  A thief gets caught red handed without knowing as he takes photos with a stolen phone.
Similar to the story of my mate Piers Schreiber who got his phone nicked in Spain on holiday… got the bill when he came home…fully itemised… calls to Morocco!

Nuff said.

This world is really getting real.  I read this on Brand Republic Tory networking site which is supposed to "court community spirit". 

FRUSTRATION because the journalist writing the piece doesn’t get what social network sites are about.  Starting a two way dialogue with your voters [in the case of the Tory party] and using the open-ness of that dialogue to forge a real relationship.

Now the politicians may be into spin. Or desperate for votes [likely] or some spin-wheeze thought up by an ad man.  Or possibly, just possibly, an electable party who really wants to make changes based on a dialogue with the electorate.  I expect there’ll be comment from the lads at Samizdata the political blog… this is really their space not mine.

Finaly, after the hype of Snakes on a plane, the Film Industry begins to ask the right questions about how to use the blogosphere to promote movies to get bums on seats, to improve their offering and I am GLAD.

Hugh MacLeod who totally gets it and has a fine sense of irony, reproduces the correspondence he had with the director of Hallam Foe, Dave Mackenzie

URL: word of mouth is not created, word of mouth is co-created.

it’s frank, it’s honest and it says what you need to try to do.  I understand the theory and just need to work on my first projects to make it happen for me and my clients.  Tough.  exciting.